Sunday, June 10, 2012

How to keep a Veggie happy

Les Petits Farcis are a typical Southern French summer dish - small vegetables such a peppers, zucchini, aubergines or onions stuffed with a meat farce (if in a hurry, even sausage meat will do) and then oven baked in a tomatoey sauce. I recently found a recipe giving a vegetarian twist to this summer staple and have finally found time to try it out. To sum it up: as far as my favorite guinea pig and I are concerned it is a keeper!
And since my brother last week called me to find him some vegetarian recipes to keep his significant other happy: Roland, here you go!


To feed 4 you need:
5 small red peppers and 4 small round zucchini
4 spring onions
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
400g fresh goat cheese
50 g freshly grated parmesan
olive oil
a generous bunch of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
salt and freshly ground pepper

Wash and dry all vegetables then cut a little "hat" off each. Clean the peppers and, with a melon baller scoop out the flesh of the zucchini which you then chop to medium consistency. Finely dice one of the red peppers, chop the spring onions. Mix the chopped up zucchini flesh and the red pepper cubes with the crushed garlic cloves and the chopped up spring onions.
Bring a big pot of water to the boil and simmer the vegetable shells for 3 to 4 minutes. Take out with a slotted spoon and drain on a double layer of paper towels.
With a fork mix the chopped parsley into the fresh goat cheese.
Heat a tbsp of olive oil in a pan and gently fry the zucchini flesh, pepper, garlic and spring onion mix until all moisture has evaporated, taking care not to brown the mix. Season to taste with pepper and salt, then take off the heat and let the mixture cool down.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F
Mix the goat cheese into the vegetable farce then fill the vegetable shells. Evenly devide the parmesan on top of the filling veg, put the "hats" on and bake for 35 minutes. Bon apétit!

10 comments:

  1. I love goats cheese but my husband will not eat it. Do you think he would notice :) Diane

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    1. If you use real fresh goat cheese Diane more than probably he won't. Let me know how it went.

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  2. Mmmm... looks delicious! I love vegchetables done in every way and this looks interesting.
    Started raining again here.. gosh when is summer coming??

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    1. Alida, yesterday afternoon it rained here too, and the temperatures fell sharply - we even lit the chimney in the evening!

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  3. Oh my, this looks amazing! I love goat's cheese!

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  4. Hi Barbara. I made this recipe for dinner tonight using little squash and peppers. The only change I made was the addition of a little bit of chopped fresh thyme. Turned out great, was easier than I thought it would be and we will definitely make the recipe again and again throughout the summer. Thanks for sharing your recipe.

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    1. Michel, great iedea - next time I'll snip some thyme in my garden and add it, too. When are you and Shirley back to Provence?

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  5. Yummy, yummy, Barbara, I love the cheese stuffing in there - thyme in it sounded good too:)

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  6. Our squash are in but no peppers yet that I have seen. Looking forward to trying this dish!

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